Talk:The Old French Tristan Poems/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: AleatoryPonderings (talk · contribs) 05:53, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

• Is David J. Shirt notable? It's jarring to have an article on a book by him and not the person himself.

  Good question! I think it depends on how expansive your interpretation of WP:NAUTHOR is. I scraped through a lot of random sources just to piece together the few words I wrote about him in this article, so on a practical level I'm not sure that an adequately detailed article could be written about him and would probably just seem like a rehashing of this article. As far as I can tell, The Old French Tristan Poems is his most-reviewed work, though he did write a bunch of other journal articles and book chapters. DanCherek (talk) 12:46, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

  Gotcha - having background on him in this article (as is the case in the current draft) works too.

• "It presents an overview of the literature on the medieval Tristan and Iseult poems, including the Tristan poems by Béroul and Thomas of Britain." Why is the first instance of Tristan and Iseult non-italicized and the second one italicized? Is it like - the first one is about the characters and the second is the name of the poem?

  That was my intent – they're often referred to as "Béroul's Tristan" and "Thomas of Britain's Tristan" but I can see how it could be confusing. I don't think the second one is really necessary so I have modified that part to "including the 12th-century poems by Béroul and Thomas of Britain" to give a sense of how old they are. DanCherek (talk) 12:46, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

• Same q as above on notability/linking of Grant & Cutler. Also, totally not a GA criteria question, but I'm curious: was Grant & Cutler a former name, or a current subsidiary of, Tamesis publishing? I've been using Bennett's Geste de Garin de Monglane biblio (OCLC 56617365) as a source for Prise d'Orange, which is part of Research Bibliographies and Checklists, new series (ISSN 1476-9700), so I assume they are somehow connected. The copyright page of that one says Tamesis is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer, which maybe bought G&C? Oddly, although Bennett's biblio lists the other volumes of the new and original series of RB&C, Old French Tristan Poems is not on that list.

  I've linked it in the article and created a redirect to Foyles for now (it is already mentioned in that target article). Without doing an exhaustive source search, I think it could be notable, as the long-time "largest foreign-language bookseller in the UK" [1], so I've added {{R with possibilities}} to the redirect. Here's what I found out: Grant & Cutler was bought by Foyles in 2011 [2]. Frank Cutler, who founded G&C, was an advisor and financial supporter of the guy who founded Tamesis [3], but I don't think the two companies were any more connected than that. G&C and Tamesis did co-publish some books [4][5]. I think Tamesis / Boydell & Brewer took over the RB&C series from G&C in 2002 [6] which is why The Old French Tristan Poems is listed on Boydell's website [7]. No idea why Bennett's bibliography doesn't include it though! DanCherek (talk) 16:00, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

  As often, an apparently simple question ends in a very complex answer. I didn't know that Foyles published books—thought it just sold them. The redirect works well as a link and maybe one of us will get around to writing the article at some point.

• "Critics generally praised its organisation": on a first read, it's not clear to me why praise of organisation in particular is something that makes sense for critics to be doing

  Modified this to "Critics generally praised its layout and use of cross-references", which should hopefully represent the Reception section in a more specific way. DanCherek (talk) 20:08, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

• "Shirt summarises the literature on the fragments of the Tristan legends by the 12th-century poets Béroul and Thomas of Britain" - would be nice to have some sense of what these fragments are

  Added a sentence describing what remains of the two poems. DanCherek (talk) 00:35, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

• "These are followed" - what are "These"?

  Reworded the start of that sentence to "In chapters four through six, Shirt surveys the scholarship on...". DanCherek (talk) 01:14, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

• Could you provide a brief description of Folie Tristan de Berne and the other poems following so the reader doesn't have to click through to find out?

  Done. DanCherek (talk) 01:14, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

• "lost Tristan poems" - can you give us a sense of what these are?

  Added a parenthetical to hopefully clarify this. DanCherek (talk) 04:00, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

• "Instead of analysing each individual entry, Shirt frequently refers to corresponding entries published in the annual Bibliographical Bulletin of the International Arthurian Society ..." - I don't understand this. Do you mean he cites reviews in the Bulletin? Why would a reference to the Bulletin be a substitute for annotations of his own? Also, same q re Bibliographical Bulletin of the International Arthurian Society. (Your answer can be: just WP:REDLINK it, which would be fine especially if you're able to give a little context for those bits that seem to need it.)

  Redlink added, and that's correct: under a given source, he will just list something like (BBSIA, XXX (1978), 144), referring the reader to a review without providing commentary himself. I think it's part of his approach to stay objective and just list studies without commenting on their merits or limitations, so he just points you to other works that have commented on those studies, if that makes sense. DanCherek (talk) 04:41, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

• "Shirt was a French scholar at ..." - could you move this up a bit, perhaps even a bit in the lede? I assumed he was some kind of academic (who else would write such a book, after all) but the context would be helpful to clarify earlier. Maybe just switch the order of "Background and publication" and "Contents"?

  I like that suggestion; swapped the background and contents sections per your suggestion. I changed Shirt's description in the first sentence to "David J. Shirt, a French scholar who specialised in Arthurian and Tristan studies" to give a bit more context, but didn't think his institution was that important to include in the lead. DanCherek (talk) 21:14, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

• " … given the rapidly increasing number of published Tristan analyses" - any sense of why their number is rapidly increasing?

  I reworded this one to "large number of published analyses of the Old French poems" – looking back at what Short wrote, it was more about a large body of work that needed organization, rather than any sort of rate of change. DanCherek (talk) 05:11, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

• "research conducted at the Institut de recherche et d'histoire des textes indicated that Shirt's bibliography was relatively comprehensive" - I don't see how research could show that a bibliography was relatively comprehensive? Did Monfrin do some sort of comparison of Shirt's book with books on hand at the Institut?

  Removed "relatively", that was just poor wording on my part (I don't remember why I put it in). Monfrin indicates that he thinks Shirt omitted basically nothing. Yes, I do think he did his own comparison of Shirt's book with his own bibliographic resources, much like what Blakeslee did to come up with the 40 extra sources. (Blakeslee writes: "Reference to our own card file has produced the following additions...") I reworded the sentence a bit to try to clarify this. DanCherek (talk) 05:11, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

• "mapping each line of Béroul's notoriously complex Tristan" - why is Béroul's (more) complex than other Tristans?

  Removed "notoriously" as it seems like a bit of a weasel word anyway. I rewrote the sentence so that it just reads "Béroul's Tristan" and then indicates that the index was well-received due to the large number of studies on the poem's origin, style, and themes. DanCherek (talk) 05:11, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

• "felt that the bibliography was limited by the format of the Research Bibliographies and Checklists series, including its approaches to numbering subsections and separating major works into distinct chapters, but that this issue was overcome by Shirt's cross-referencing system" - what aspects of the RB&C house style are limiting for Shirt's biblio in particular?

  Added a bit based on Gier's review that he didn't like the way that the numbering was restarted in each subsection and pointed out that this occured in many books in the series. DanCherek (talk) 05:39, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

• Any chance of finding Blakeslee's review online? I've had no luck in a few searches but thought I'd ask anyway.

  I wasn't able to find it online but was kindly sent a copy after I put in a request at WP:RX – happy to share it with you via email if you'd like! DanCherek (talk) 12:51, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

  I'm fine to AGF it—I've gotten the gist from reading your article!

• Lots of sources in languages I don't speak, which is fine, just means I'm AGFing more than I normally would. The ones in English and French seem to check out except for the bit about Shirt being limited by the format of the series - is that a reference to "De très nombreux renvois croisés pallient autant qu'il est possible les inconvénients – inévitables – d'une telle manière de procéder"? If so, it wasn't clear to me (in my admittedly rudimentary French) that Monfrin takes this format to be a consequence of strictures imposed by the series.

  I think I got my references mixed up here. Rewrote the section entirely, attributing Gier's opinion as described above (original German: bedauerlich ist nur, daß (wie in vielen Bibliographien dieser Reihe) die mit jedem Unterabschnitt neu einsetzende Numerierung die Auswertung der Querverweise einigermaßen mühsam macht; es wäre wohl doch sinnvoller, die einzelnen Title ohne Rücksicht auf die Abschnittgliederung fortlaufend durchzunumerieren.).

Overall: more context for the lay reader would be good—maybe even a paragraph (perhaps lifted from Tristan and Iseult) about the legend itself. Beyond that and my specific comments above, I have nothing else—except to plug a peer review I just opened for Prise d'Orange, in case medieval literature is your thing more generally. AleatoryPonderings (???) (!!!) 06:37, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

I've added a summary of the legend to the Background section with a sentence introducing the Old French poems. DanCherek (talk) 21:14, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for the thorough review! I'll start working my way through these comments. I'm thrilled to see the awesome work you did at Prise d'Orange and will definitely leave some comments in the PR when I can. DanCherek (talk) 12:46, 19 February 2022 (UTC)

@AleatoryPonderings: I've responded to each of the comments above, let me know what you think! Thanks again – I'm pleased with how the article is shaping up. DanCherek (talk) 05:41, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

• A few inline replies above where I thought additional clarity beyond "acknowledged" or "good job" would be helpful. The content you've added on Tristan and Iseult is excellent and exceptionally well written, so congrats. Will pass shortly. (Thanks also for your comments on Prise—I've been onwiki less in the past few days but have noticed you on my watchlist. Much appreciated.) AleatoryPonderings (???) (!!!) 23:01, 21 February 2022 (UTC)